The present invention relates to an IC card reader/writer which has a connector with contact members adapted to be come into contact with contacts of an IC card, respectively, and performs transmission and reception of data to/from an electronic circuit (including a CPU) in the IC card through the electrical connection due to the contact between the contacts of the IC card and the contact members of the connector.
As shown in FIG. 5, in a conventional IC card reader/writer, an IC card A inserted to a card inserting port (locating on the right side in FIG. 5) is conveyed through a card conveying path 33 by conveying rollers 31 and 32. A sensor 34 to detect the front edge of the IC card A is arranged at a predetermined position on the card conveying path 33. When the sensor 34 detects the front edge of the IC card A, motors to drive the conveying rollers 31 and 32 are turned off to stop the IC card A at a predetermined position, at the same time, contact members 37 are rotated by an actuator 36 so as to be come into contact with the contacts of the IC card A, and thereafter, a pin check is performed, and if the result of the pin check is OK, card information is read out or written. The pin check is a process to check whether the contacts and the contact members are correctly set in the contact state or not by transmitting and receiving predetermined data between the IC card reader/writer and the IC card through the contact between the contacts and the contact members.
In the case where in spite of the fact that the sensor 34 detected a card, possible errors to be found by the pin check which is executed after that are as follows.
One is that the IC card A has overrun from the predetermined position shown in FIG. 5 and stopped, so that the contact members 37 are deviated from the position of the contacts of the IC card. The second cause is that in spite of the fact that the IC card A has stopped at the proper predetermined position, a defective contact occurs due to dust, fouling or the like.
In the conventional structure shown in FIG. 5, it is impossible to discriminate whether the IC card A has stopped at the proper predetermined position or not, so that it is impossible to decide by which one of the foregoing causes the error occurred and a fault occurs in the error process.